New Tumblr Calls Out Arms-Crossed Photo Epidemic

Barr was scanning the Newseum website — which displays the front pages of several hundred newspapers each day — for a different Tumblr idea when he started noticing a pattern. A lot of papers, especially the smaller ones, were publishing photos of people staring at the camera with their arms crossed. He started collecting the photos and eventually aggregated them on the site.

“I wasn’t trying to make a statement about photography, I just thought it was fun,” says Barr, 25, who recently graduated with a masters in journalism from the University of Maryland.

Anyone who has ever worked at, or subscribed to, a small-town newspaper can relate to the arms-crossed photos. I made my fair share as a photojournalist, and they’re a standard shortcut, or crutch, for photographers trying to knock out a quick (and uninventive) portrait on deadline. Larger publications are also occasionally guilty, including Wired.

The blog may seem to mock these photojournalists’ lack of creativity, but Barr says he was just trying to point out a pattern and have a little fun with it.

“I’m not a media critic or a photojournalism critic in any way,” he says.

Ironically, the day the Tumblr started to spread — last Thursday — was also the day the Chicago Sun-Times announced it was laying off its entire full-time photo staff. More than 25 people got a pink slip and were told they would be replaced by freelancers and iPhone-wielding reporters.

The Sun-Times employed several talented photojournalists, including Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer John H. White, so people are waiting to see how the visual quality of the newspaper deteriorates. I guess one way to know will be to count how many crossed arm portraits start appearing.